We so often act without even thinking because we have been conditioned to respond. Habituation, sensitization, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning are all learning processes that associate a specific behavior with a particular stimulus and cause us to act before we can think. These responses account for a substantial portion of our behavior. They are often learned quickly, sometimes unknowingly, and can only be changed by carefully and systematically extinguishing them.

Conditioned responses make up the third layer of the architecture for interaction.

Definitions

1. Learning: Persistent changes in behavior that result from experience

Habituation and Sensitization

Habituation is learning not to respond to the repeated presentation of a stimulus.

Pavlov's Dogs - Classical Conditioning

While studying digestion in dogs, Ivan Pavlov understood well the reflex that causes dogs to salivate when food is presented. His surprising new finding was that the salivation response could be elicited by ringing a bell, even in the absence of food, if the dog had been conditioned in a particular way to associate the ringing bell with the delivery of food and subsequent salivation. During several conditioning events, a bell was rung immediately before food was presented to the dog. Of course, the dog salivated as the food was presented. However, after several events that paired the ringing bell with salivation, the food was no longer needed to elicit the same salivation response. When the bell rang, the dog salivated even though no food was present. A new behavior was learned.

The general phenomenon of learning to associate a new, neutral stimulus (e.g. ringing the bell) with a previously existing response (e.g. salivation) is called classical conditioning.

Skinner's Box - Operant conditioning

Edward Thorndike, B. F. Skinner, and many others dedicated their careers to studying the range of animal and human behaviors that can be influenced by environmental consequences such as rewards—known as reinforcements—and punishments. The general concept of modifying voluntary behavior through the use of consequences is known as operant conditioning, and is sometimes also called instrumental conditioning or instrumental learning.

Extinguishing Conditioned Behaviors

Examples of Conditioned Human Behavior

Drill and Practice

Touch Typing . . .

Cultural Preferences

In the United States drivers quickly learn to keep their automobiles in the right-hand traffic lanes. When learning to drive, staying to the right is reinforced by the approval, expectations, and perhaps praise apparent from the driving instructor, passengers, and sometimes other drivers. Also, leaving the right-hand lanes and traveling in the left-hand lanes is discouraged (i.e. punished) by corrections or reprimand from the instructor, and often fearful exclamations from passengers and other drivers. Driving on the right is safe and rewarded, driving on the left is dangerous and punished. The message is clear and drivers quickly learn to stay to the right without conscious thought. This behavior is something that is practiced, and reinforced, almost daily. In the United Kingdom drivers learn to stay to the left rather than to the right. The two customs are simple, arbitrary, and equivalent. Compared to the complexities of learning to drive, this convention seems simple. However, it is very difficult for a driver with years of experience driving on one side of the road to drive on the other side when visiting a foreign country. The driver must focus strict attention; reminding himself constantly to stay on the unfamiliar of the road.

Musical scales that sound harmonious in one culture sound discordant in others. . . Consonance and dissonance

Acquired food preferences and aversions

Aversive Conditioning

Phobias

Other conditioned responses

• A wide variety of experiments have shown that the number of plural nouns (for example) produced by a subject will increase if the experimenter says "right" or "good" when one is produced [Chom]

References

Learning and Memory, by Barry Schwartz, Daniel Reisberg

Domjan and Burkhard's the Principles of Learning and Behavior, by Michael Domjan

Psychology: Core Concepts, by Phillip G. Zimbardo, Ann L. Weber, Robert L. Johnson

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov Web site, including the full text of his lectures.

Maps of Bounded Rationality: A Perspective on Intuitive Judgment and Choice, Nobel Prize Lecture, December 8, 2002 by Daniel Kahneman

[Chom] A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior in Language, 35, No. 1 (1959), 26-58, by Noam Chomsky

Is the Operant Contingency Enough for a Science of Purposive Behavior?, William Timberlake, Behavior and Philosophy, 32, 197-229 (2004)